That infamous 2 week mark is approaching where I get overwhelmed by the thought of scrapbook catch up. So here I am while the girls enjoy homeschool afternoon, Jason is in the gardens and I've got one stew in the crockpot heating and a second soup on the stove simmering for our small group gathering tonight around the fire ring.
The (many) pictures here will show the glorious, colorful, productive, fun, celebratory, sweet, wonderful and photo-worthy moments of these last 2 weeks. Not included are various ones of us taking our turns melting down and falling apart, illness complicating schedules and heightening anxiety, relationship work that feels fruitful or frustrating or both, and so much more. So here's one small slice of life's much more complicated and flavorful pie!
March 28 - FINALLY we got a Bear care day again!! And what fun we had catching up on all the ways he is growing and changing SO fast! Some favorites:
Another highlight (which I'm realizing right now took place on the eve of April Fool's Day) was our final pitstop on the way home where the girls and I delighted in finding an overripe banana to buy for Jason from the convenience store. We even broke it in half to do our best to simulate his recent dream, except in this instance he had not forgotten his wallet and we were able to pay for the banana! We also bought a pizza (unrelated to his dream and related to our rumbling tummies)!!
April 1 - Well, this is always kinda a big day in our home - I think it might be one of the favorite or at least most celebrated holiday's of the year. There was a lot happening and it was not all related to our family gardening day. It's actually quite shocking that we got the potatoes planted, the biochar pit filled back up with duff from the remnants of the brush pile, the onions AND the parsley planted. While we were busy outside, there were chicks hatching inside and Grandma was busy working on dinner for her stuffed animals! I don't think Grandma finished her to do list that day (as some items may have been added to it) and I found some to do's in the seed potato sack that I also didn't manage to fit into the day.
It was not a joke that 3 snakes (2 males fighting over who was going to get to reproduce with a female) kept showing up right where we were in the gardens and had some of us a little skittish. You'd think they would have been too busy to pay much attention to us but I did get a little too close one time and one of the smaller males came after me trying to be very scary looking (in all fairness, I did back away!).
We had a good hatch that day but our one green egg that showed up in the incubator did not hatch sadly.
We also have no intentions of hatching the T. Rex. eggs Kali's collected from the breeder pens that evening.
My mom threatened that we would not get dinner if we didn't behave that day while they were out and about. We didn't cause any serious damage but I can't promise we stayed out of their home entirely or that those 120 plastic Easter eggs we have didn't come in handy in making their bed a little bumpier than usual. Thankfully, in the end, she took pity on us and did feed us a very interesting dinner!
We had dessert first - cupcakes, lollipops and pudding!*
And we topped off our evening with meatloaf and fries!*
What a silly bunch!
*food served: meatloaf and mashed potato "cupcakes," jello salad "pudding," and brussels sprout "lollipops" followed by chocolate rice krispie treat "meatloaf" and apple "fries"
April 2 - With most of our tricks and jokes out of our systems, we enjoyed a day with plenty of chick adoring fit into all the cracks!! Jason got our tomatoes, hot peppers, flowers and sea oats (from our summer vacation to Michigan) started and Alida had her skills assessment as a kick off for the soccer season (ready or not, here it comes).
We feel grateful to my dad for his continued (and VERY optional) help with morning chores and when Luca comes over he always wants to find and say hi to Grandpa Herb and Grandma Sarah.
April 3 - Alida's eagerly anticipated bonus birthday did not quite go as planned. One of the goals was making memories and we definitely did that, if not the expected ones! The day started out fun. Alida was VERY sore from her soccer practice the evening before but we thought was fine otherwise. We had a fun wet picnic at the arboretum, enjoying take out from the Little Grill (thanks to a bday present for me from my parents) and then watching the baby Great Horned Owls for a long time (and I could have stayed longer). As we left there, Alida started to fade and faded quickly. We got some necessary soccer shopping done before nixing the rest of our plans for home and snuggles!
We couldn't see the real owls very well, but we had our own cute little owl!
Alida and I snuggled up and before long were both asleep and only got in on the very tail end of what appears to be a very magnificent double rainbow from all of Jason's pictures!
April 4 - The cold traveled quickly from Alida to Terah and was a big bummer and changed plans AGAIN for our times with others. Sigh!! It was a good impetus for finally making a large batch of elderberry syrup from dried berries I had been looking at and doing nothing about for years. And Terah felt good enough for chick adoration!
April 5 - Before I headed to town to do the weekly errands and Jason took off for Oak Spring Garden Foundation to teach a two day chicken workshop, we plowed through some things on the farm in the morning. We really do make one amazing team! We got the pigs moved to their spring/summer/fall pasture pen system and then seeded oats, sugar snaps, beets, cilantro, lettuce, dill, and collards (all in less than 2 hours - thanks to all the soil healing work that has taken place over many years!). Historically, preparing the soil took many many hours and now there is sometimes not more than a few minutes of prep! We were working too fast to take any pictures...
Jason was hosted in a very fancy guest house at OSGF, overlooking Bunny Mellon's main house garden. I believe he was much more comfortable in the chicken coop and had a lovely (if exhausting) time talking chickens with other interested persons for two days!
April 6 - While Jason's talked chickens, the girls and I enjoyed a day at home Saturday and did the annual mustard run pull (my magnolia now has a nice layer of mustard-mulch) followed by enjoying Kali's delicious homemade tomato soup topped with maybe the only winter cress I'll get around to sautéing and toasted cheese sandwiches.
A few views from Jason's location:
April 7 - I was the only one that stayed put today! The girls took off for NY to take in the eclipse (in its totality!) and Jason traveled back home to me after the conclusion of his workshop. I always feel so grateful when my loved ones are on the road and get where they are intending to go safely!
April 8 - Our Monday family work day was a J+J work day this week and I learned to mow (with the corded mower!). We also did some of the first work in the seed cage for the SARE grant. AND we enjoyed the solar eclipse in the afternoon before I had my first doula meeting with a new family I'm working with. A monumental day all around! The kids got to enjoy the total darkness and were all glad they went, even though there wasn't much of a break in the clouds there!
The pigs were more interested in their slop than donning the eclipse glasses!
I enjoyed my first spinach salad with violets AND red buds while taking peeks up at the moon covering the sun!
April 9 and 10 - the last two days have been a hodge podge of odds and ends for me and Jason - we need those kinds of days regularly, even if they don't pay the bills. The girls returned home VERY tired and we are contending with an additional bug-souvenir from the travels. Another sigh! So let's end this post on a very sweet and cute note. Google photos was feeding Kali a few pictures recently that reminded me very much of ones I'm taking now, but with smaller versions of the same people. I guess we've been enjoying little chickens for a long time now!
His open mouthed crawl is pretty adorable too! He got to be a big helper on this particular Thursday by joining me to hide Easter eggs for Alida and Terah and some of their friends. He didn't give away any hiding spots AND he was pleased to get to play to his heart's content with the eggs following the conclusion of the hunt! While Kali was in class and the rest of us enjoyed a walk or playdate with friends (including the aforementioned hunt), Jason worked hard finishing up the potato trenching. Yes, he did it all by himself this year and we are so very grateful!
